THE LICENSING ACT.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4467, 21 September 1901, Page 4

THE LICENSING ACT.

After long expectation, a Bill is at last in sight for dealing with the licensing law. But, though in sight, the outlines of the measure are only ■ lightly indicated. It will, when it comes to the House, be found, the Premier explained, proposing certain amendments. These will deal with.transfer of licenses; with licenses required for the tourists who complain of the lack of comforts on some of the f lines of travel which are naturally the most attractive; with tied houses; and with'the powers of endorse,' ment of licenses possessed 'by ' Magistrates. Of these; the first and the last have been mentioned before. ’They have been, in fact, fully thrashed out in the House in one way or another. The present practice of transferring licenses from one part of a district to another' has been condemned' generally, and by none more emphatically than the Premier himself. It has, too, been generally recognised that the mandatory endorsement is too sweeping in its effects, unfair and dangerous. , Ther* fore, one is not surprised to see these two previsions notified by the Premier as being in the'BUl. That- the Act is capable of improvement 'in these directions is, of course, certain; hut beyond that, it is difficult to say anything until tEe Bill itself is before ns. In the matter of tied houses it is impossible, from the information given, to-form an cjxn ion about the proposal.. On the whol % the .s degree of amendment propo**vi is not large. The Bill simply proposes to get minor points placed on a better footing, without touching the dangerous springs of discussion which lie at the root of the licensing question. The second point as named above is not the least important of the list., It >.« long been evident that the accommodation for tourists in various parts of the country is not what they have-a rteht to expect. "Sly grog” makes night hideous about them, interferes with their comfort in various ways, and sometimes half poisons them with bad 'iqnor. Complaints under this head are numerous; most -people are, in. fact, familiar with them. Every tourist,who comes through these things goes back to his own country uttering'bad advertisements for Now Zealand. Bat it is in the higEest degree advisable that h e should give favourable reports,becanso the

scenery of this country is such as to make the tourist traffic grow rapidly. That traffic has boon kept back by the fact that the facilities of all kinds which are expected by travellers are not wor tbyofthe scenery, which is superlative. The establishment of a Tourist Department has begun to remedy the defect, so far as the travelling is concerned; It remains still to do the same thing for the accommodation. But until the liquor question is placed on a basis satisfactory both to proprietors and tourists, the hope of improvement must necessarily remain small. Wore the I'censed houses in Switzerland closed, and. nothing substituted, tbo tourist revenue on which that much travelled country lives would bo seriously diminished.

The temperance people have, we understand, the special objection to all proposals in this direction that 1 if carried they may some day bo used to defeat a prohibition vote. For example,- ■ if Taranaki wore to vote no license, Jii might be held that as Mount Egmont is a tourist resort, and as tourists must travel there by New Plymouth or by Hawera, or by Opunake, or by other places, it might be urged that, it was necessary to grant licenses in all those places. Similarly, and taking a wider range, it might be that, Auckland being on the route -to Rotorua, also .Napier, and also Wanganui, and - without doubt Wellington, prohibition could be safely defied in these placet for tourists' sake, in spite of its success at. .the. local option polls. Now, these- are very ingenious suppositions, but they are never likely to get to a practical test of any kind. If, however, anybody, makes a point of being otherwise afraid, itwould be > very easy to devise a clause which would make■■ imoossible suhh evasion as these suppositions . contemplate. The objection, being one of the abuse of the law, is met by the consideration that the law oau oe guarded against abuse. At the' Hermitage and at the Hanmer Springs, the -difficulty is got over, as the Premier mentioned in introducing the Bill. Why not elsewhere? There are places, too, where the 'granting of licenses has , not been followed by the evils predicted. That fact ought to be a good guide for future action.